With a large balcony that completely wraps around the sides and back of a 1,000-seat sanctuary, this church required a sound system that was able to throw sound clearly and intelligibly over a long distance, and at the same time cover a very wide area. A typical line array wouldn't be able to fulfill all of these requirements without numerous adjacent hangs and then would still run the risk of interference between arrays. Fortunately, by installing the RoomMatch asymmetrical array module, First Baptist Church got the sound it needed in time for Christmas services.
The depth and width of the sanctuary interior posed a significant challenge when it came to coverage. Mark LaBouff, national sales manager, and Robert Coggins, senior engineer, both at FBP Systems (which has offices in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Elgin, Illinois) were aware that the RoomMatch asymmetrical speaker design had just become available in October. "The RoomMatch modules offer amazing engineering, and we knew that it would form the basis of our design response to this church's sound system needs," explains Coggins.
The system, as designed and installed, consists of a centre array using one RM7020, two RM9020 and one RM12040 modules, as well as two RMS215 subwoofer modules. The left and right arrays, which use the asymmetrical array modules, are made up of RM283505, RM286010 and RM286020 modules (one apiece) on the left side, and RM352805, RM602810, and RM602820 modules (also one apiece) on the right.
The entire system is powered using six Bose PowerMatch PM8500N amplifiers and is managed using Dante from a Yamaha mixer to a Bose ControlSpace ESP-00 engineered sound processor. Four ESP Link I/O cards link to the PowerMatch amplifiers. FBP Systems also upgraded the video production suite to full HD and utilizes a Broadcast Pix Mica switcher as the heart of the system.
"The system is designed to keep energy off of the side walls yet still project it well into the seating areas on the floor and in the balcony," LaBouff explains. "And the way we've configured the arrays using the RoomMatch asymmetrical array modules, we achieve that with a seamlessness that we couldn't have gotten with any other system or product."
Coggins notes that he talked with Bose engineers about the idea of reversing the left and right arrays in the design, and they encouraged it, which he says shows the robustness of the Bose product designs and the willingness of their engineers to help users innovate on their own. And both Coggins and LaBouff point out that the First Baptist Church installation is the first US project to incorporate the new asymmetrical array modules and the first use of Bose products on a Dante network. "Bose keeps coming up with great products that let us serve our customers better," says LaBouff. "The RoomMatch asymmetrical array modules came along just in time."
(Jim Evans)
